The Doctor's Recovery

“Not especially.”

Well, he was. Exhausted. Wyatt pressed a kiss against his mom’s pale cheek. “We can talk about this tomorrow. I’m on days this week, and I need to sleep.”

She reached up as if to touch him, but her fingers stirred only the air between them. “My mind is made up.”

He wasn’t sure if it was the bed rail or something else that held her back. Not that it mattered. He’d long ago outgrown his need for motherly affection.

Besides, his mind was made up, too. He might be surrounded by stubborn women, but that wouldn’t stop him from doing what was right.

CHAPTER THREE

MIA TUGGED ON the twin ties on her hospital gown and gritted her teeth. She’d needed only one day to learn to tie her shoes in grade school. No way was a flimsy gown going to beat her. Of course, in elementary school her fingers hadn’t been numb or her arm stiff and sore from even the smallest movement. Still, she’d tie her gown closed as she had nothing else to do until her morning physical therapy in an hour.

This was the perfect catnap opportunity. Yet her mind refused to let her sleep. Every time she closed her eyes, images from her accident bombarded her. She wasn’t certain what was real and what was manufactured by her nightmares. Real or imagined, fear rippled through her like the explosive screech of a frightened red fox and retreated only if she opened her eyes. She’d never considered herself stupid or irrational. Until now. Clearly three days without decent sleep had taken its toll.

At least she had a plan. Because another night of no sleep was unacceptable.

Her fingers trembled, and the thin strap slipped from her grip. Numbness absorbed her arm, and her leg throbbed from Dr. Hensen’s routine exam. Tears pooled in her eyes. She refused to cry, especially over stupid things. Still her chin sagged toward her chest, and her arms drooped to her sides. Everything inside her went limp, and defeat rushed in.

“You better not be crying.” Eddy Fuller’s voice filled her room, the nervous tremor in his tone increasing his volume. His curly hair always reminded her of a cup of coffee sweetened with too many creamers and complemented his usual laid-back style.

“I’m not.” Mia mumbled into her chest and avoided looking at her best friend and her father’s longtime video editor.

“Good. Tears are annoying.” Eddy stopped just inside the room and set the bags he carried on the floor near his feet. “Then what are you doing?”

“Trying to tie my gown.” And squeeze her stupid tears back behind her eyes.

Eddy made quick work of the ties behind her neck before retreating against the wall near the bathroom. His skin looked faded. He pinched his lips together as if struggling not to breathe too deeply. Eddy and hospitals did not play well together.

Mia latched on to her friend’s discomfort like a life preserver, pulling her out of her own self-pity pool. “You watch criminal and medical dramas in marathon sessions every week. How can my cuts bother you?”

“They look worse today.” His gaze lowered from the abstract art hanging on the wall behind her to her face, where it stuck. “You’re pushing too hard.”

She ignored the last part. She wasn’t pushing hard enough to get out. “You didn’t even look at my leg.”

“I don’t need to look at the ooze and pus to know it’s there.” Eddy’s gaze never wavered, unlike the ashen color that rolled over his skin.

“It’s supposed to look like this. It’s healing.” She hoped. The throbbing in her leg had become steady and constant, even before Dr. Hensen took the culture of her wound that morning. “Give me the laptop and I’ll release you from this torture. I really appreciate that you came all the way to my room.”

Eddy pushed away from the wall and kept his focus on Mia. “Will you still appreciate me when I tell you that I called your mom?”

“You talked to my mom?” The back of her head pounded like someone had smashed the abstract art frame against her head.

Eddy squeezed the wedding ring tattooed around his ring finger like he always did whenever doubt seized him. “She needed to know.”

“That I’m fine,” Mia added.

“That you’re in the hospital and working toward being fine,” Eddy clarified.

“You told her everything?” Everything would only make her mom worry. And her mom already made a worrywart sound like an optimist. The throb extended around to Mia’s temples and stabbed.

“I explained that you had a diving accident during a filming session.”

That was more than enough for her mom to book the first flight from New York to San Francisco. Almost seven hours in the plane for her mom to fret about how Mia should live her life with less risk. To strategize about how Mia could still express her passion for saving the wildlife by donating to charities rather than camping out in the wilderness as if she was a native. Seven hours for her mom to torment her already high-strung nerves into a full-blown anxiety attack over Mia’s refusal to make a big difference in the world from behind a nice, secure cherry-stained desk.

Mia grabbed her phone and texted her mom, stalling any flight confirmations and keeping her mom at home, where she’d always been the calmest. Still, Mia had to finish her film and get back to her life before her mom arrived to turn Mia’s world inside out. “I’ll deal with my mom later. I just need the laptop now.”

Eddy tilted his head and studied her, his curls shifting as if to emphasize his internal debate. “You can watch Shane’s footage from Sunday on your phone.”

“I don’t want Shane’s edited version.” Mia motioned toward the laptop bag that sat on the floor. “I want to watch all of it.”

“You need to concentrate on healing, not reliving the accident.” Eddy made no move to pick up the computer bag. “It wasn’t easy for us to review.”

That was Eddy’s sensitivity to blood and hospitals talking. Besides, she already relived the accident every time she closed her eyes. Every time she fell asleep. If she watched the footage, maybe her dreams would find new content, instead of replaying the same thing. “We’re going to need new footage to finish the film.”

Eddy’s gaze skipped away from her, but it wasn’t the pus and ooze chasing off his focus this time. It was doubt. Doubt that Mia could get new footage. She’d never seen Eddy second-guess any of her father’s decisions. He’d never questioned her father’s ability to get even the most difficult shot.

But Mia wasn’t her father, and Eddy made that fact more than clear when he said, “We need to wrap it up with what we have and just be done.”

She wouldn’t just be done until she finished the film to her father’s standards. Nothing else would ensure his legacy. Nothing else would ensure the recognition and accolades her father had always coveted in life. Nothing else would ensure her mother’s lifestyle remained the same just like she’d promised her dad. “We’ll be done when it’s finished like my father expected and it’s worthy of the Fiore name.”

Eddy stiffened. “You sounded like your dad just now.”

“Excellent,” she said. Yet confusion creased into the edges of his eyes and uncertainty tipped his chin down. Her friend still doubted her. So be it. She’d become who her father had planned for her to be and prove Eddy and everyone else wrong. “I’d think the more like him I am, the better for all of us.”

Eddy set the computer bag on the bedside table. “Just be careful you don’t lose yourself in your father’s ghost.”

Her father wouldn’t be a ghost if she’d stepped further out of her comfort zone. Only the lazy and uninspired curl up in their comfort zones, Mia. I raised you to be more than that. Now she had to be more to keep from disappointing anyone else. “I’m upholding the Fiore family legacy.”

Her duty as an only child was to continue the Fiore filmmaking tradition as her father had always envisioned. Her responsibility as the only Fiore child was to take care of her mother just as her father had always done. Just as she’d promised him she would.

Eddy pulled a smaller leather case from the paper shopping bag he’d brought in and dropped it on her lap. “The guys and I got you something.”

Mia unzipped the top and gaped at the digital camera tucked inside. “What am I supposed to do with this?”

“Take pictures. Open your creative mind,” Eddy said. “It’ll be a good distraction while you’re here.”

Her creative mind was open and ready to finish the final documentary in her father’s acclaimed series. Her creative mind was already at full capacity with her film work. Art must always send a message that impacts many lives, Mia.

Pictures of IV lines, needle containers and hand sanitizer hardly impacted lives. Portraits wouldn’t pay the mortgage on her mother’s house. Unless, of course, those same pictures were taken in the aftermath of a bombing in the Middle East. Yet she wasn’t in Syria and Bay Water Medical wasn’t inside a war zone. Photojournalist wasn’t her job title. Neither was photographer.

Besides, only her body had been damaged in the accident, not her mind. Not her creative side. She ran her finger along the zipper, the uneven edge matching the uncertainty knotting through her. What if she’d lost something more precious like her passion? Not possible. More than just her livelihood relied on her finishing this film and securing new contracts. “You expect me to take pictures? Here?”

“It’s a camera, Mia, not a bow and arrow.” Eddy swatted at the air as if annoyed by a pesky mosquito, not his good friend. “We aren’t suggesting you have target practice out in the hallways.”

No, it was worse than that. Her friends suggested that she betray her father’s memory by wasting her time with still photographs. “What happened to crossword puzzles and books to fill the time?”

Eddy grinned and walked to the door. “Have to think outside the box to keep the creativity lines open.”

He’d quoted her father. But her dad had meant with film work. With the important work that touched many lives. With the film work that supported her mother all these years. The soft knock on the door followed by the cheerful greeting from her physical therapist saved Mia from correcting Eddy’s misconception. She set the camera bag on the rolling table and pushed it away, along with her doubts.

Time to concentrate on therapy and exercise. Walking without pain. Moving without pain. There was nothing wrong with her creative mind. Nothing that a camera could fix. The hospital walls compressed in on her. The bland, dull paint made everything stark, barren and exposed her uncertainties. Clearly, she’d been alone with her own thoughts too much. She needed breathing space. “I want to walk the entire floor today, not just this hall.”

“How’s your pain?” Robyn unclipped several of Mia’s monitors.

“Tolerable,” Mia said. Numbness and pain wouldn’t interfere with her therapy. She had to prove she’d made progress, and that had to start now. With every hour she remained inside Bay Water Medical, her resolve leached into the pale walls like blood into white carpet.

“We’ll take it slow and easy,” Robyn said.

“We can stop at the nurses’ station,” Mia suggested. “Take stock. Turn back or keep going.” She had no intention of returning to her room until she’d walked every linoleum-covered inch of the third floor.

Mia managed to cover only one hallway before she leaned against the nurses’ station and tried to wrestle her pain back into submission. Another physical therapist accompanied a woman. Her pure-white hair and the unsteady grip of her hands, all knuckles and veins, on her walker betrayed her age even though gravity had failed to diminish her height and transform her into one of those pint-sized seniors. The pair paused beside Mia.

“Helen, let me see your hand.” The charge nurse, Nettie, leaned over the counter toward the older woman. “I swear you must have a green arm because no normal green thumb could’ve saved my plant.”

The silver woven through Nettie’s black hair broadcast her experience with life, making her a cross between the neighborhood’s favorite nana and the matriarch of a dignified political family. Nettie’s straightforward nature and disdain for sugarcoating made her one of Mia’s favorite nurses on the floor.

Nettie tapped her phone, spun the screen around and grinned proudly. “I was ready to toss that gardenia into the Dumpster, and now look at it.”

Mia assumed she’d have a dead thumb if she tried to grow anything. Her mom believed in silk plants and Waterford crystal to decorate a home with life. Her father believed nature belonged in its native habitat. Mia wasn’t sure if she agreed, but she’d need more than a home for a plant. She’d need to give it her time and attention, and that was in short supply.

“Isn’t it just lovely.” Helen pushed her glasses up. Her smile bloomed up into her eyes, filling her fragile skin with light. “The scent when it flowers will fill your entire house.”

Roslyn, a nursing assistant with the ink still drying on her certification, glanced at the phone over Nettie’s shoulder. “The city gardeners could learn something from you.”

“I’m an amateur with no formal schooling,” Helen said.

But the older woman had passion even without formal training, and that mattered. A passion that glowed from within her like the sunrise streaking burnt gold across the plains in Zimbabwe, rousing the wild to life. Only Helen awakened someone’s love for nature.

“You’re a plant whisperer, Ms. Reid.” Awe lowered Roslyn’s voice into a church whisper.

“Nothing like that.” Helen patted her hair as if she’d revealed too much and needed to tuck her secrets back in place. “I’ve grown my share of gardenias over the years. Once you understand their temperament, they thrive and blossom.”

“If only you had a cure for a temperamental man, Helen.” Nettie’s grin lifted her eyebrows. “We could bottle it, make millions and retire in style.”

“I have better luck with plants.” Helen reached for her walker, her movements slow, as if someone lowered the dimmer switch inside her.

“Nonsense.” Nettie looked at Mia. “She’s got a son working more hours than sanity recommends down in the ER. You raised him right, Helen.”

The plant whisperer is Helen Reid. As in Wyatt Reid’s mom. The one Wyatt had told Mia was recovering from hip surgery down the hall from her. Helen had an inch or two on Mia even hunched over her walker. Wyatt’s height hadn’t come from only his father’s side. But Wyatt’s personality fit into every inch of his six-three frame. His willpower alone displaced any soft spots. Nothing on Wyatt appeared weak. Everything about Helen was fragile, from her thin frame to her shaky grip on her walker. She reminded Mia of one of those flamingos at the zoo, standing on one thin leg, regal and proud yet looking as if the slightest jostle would topple her. “Are you Wyatt Reid’s mother?”

“He’s my son, but he hasn’t needed me as his mother in quite some time.” Her voice wilted like her white curls that drooped against her head as if faint from dehydration.

“Wyatt mentioned he was on his way to see you when I spoke to him last night,” Mia said.

A three-point walker turn and small shuffle brought Helen face-to-face with Mia. Her eyes, not slate like Wyatt’s but hazel, blinked behind large round glasses, reflecting an all-too-familiar calculated focus. Mother and son were not that different.

Only one blink interrupted Helen’s slow study of Mia, as if Mia squatted under a microscope. “He cannot be your doctor, dear, as he only treats patients in the emergency room.”

“He saved my life the other night,” Mia confessed. Wyatt required no boost to his ego. Yet his mother should know the depth of her son’s medical skills. “Although we’d already met several years ago in Africa.”

Helen winced, as if in pain, but never reached to massage her tender hip or sore side. Only that flinch of discomfort pinched her skin, flexing the age lines across her face. “Do you volunteer with Wyatt’s organization, too?”

“No,” Mia said.

Helen’s face cleared and her mouth softened, as if the phantom pain receded. Her wispy eyebrows lifted above her glasses, her only encouragement for Mia to continue.

“I’m a documentary filmmaker.” Mia sank into the older woman’s open gaze, recognizing the flicker of loneliness in the hazel depths. Mia knew all too well about feeling alone, even in a crowd. Helen’s gaze hooked inside Mia and prodded her to keep talking. “One of my crew fell from a cliff, and the locals told us to take him to Wyatt in the neighboring village. They were convinced only Wyatt could help him.”

“And did he live?” Robyn finished writing her notes and tucked the paperwork in the back pocket of her scrubs.

“Thanks to Wyatt.” Mia maneuvered her walker next to Helen’s.

“Like I said before, Helen, you raised him right. And a boy raised right always needs his mama.” Nettie set her phone on the counter and turned away to answer a patient’s call on the intercom system.

“That’s kind, but it’s utter nonsense.” Helen’s quiet laughter failed to mask the sadness that burned into the dark rims around her eyes.

Robyn stepped up beside Mia. “Okay, ladies, we’ve rested and it’s time to walk.”

Helen’s PT joined them. “Ready to head back, Helen?”

“I suppose it’s my only option, unless you’re going to let me make my escape.” Helen pointed her thumb over her shoulder at the main elevators. “You’d only need to look the other way for five minutes.”

The women laughed. “You can rest in the chairs at the end of the hallway until Occupational Therapy arrives. There’s a good view of the elevators from there. You can run on OT’s watch.”

Helen set her hand on Mia’s walker. “They’re not going to let you leave either, dear. You might as well tell me about this filmmaking while we walk. You’ll save me from answering more questions about my pain level and bathroom successes.”

“It’s a family business,” Mia said. “Or was until my father passed last fall.” She always remained detached in the retelling. Always. Until now. With Wyatt’s mom. Now the grief cinched around her lungs like some medieval corset, replacing air with tears. Save the emotion for the film reel, Mia.

“I’m sorry.” Nothing false slipped through Helen’s words. “Now you’re left with the burden to carry on alone.”

The sincerity in Helen’s voice crested through Mia, and the understanding in her gaze loosened several tears. Helen knew loss. She also recognized loneliness. The similarities between mother and son clearly ran only skin deep. Mia brushed at her damp cheek. “My dad taught me everything I know, and I can’t fail him.”

“Of course you won’t, my dear.” Helen squeezed Mia’s arm with the same confident strength that bolstered her voice. “Now tell me, what do you film?”

“My father started with human rights before transitioning into environmental issues. His last two series covered endangered wildlife around the world and the effects of urban sprawl on their habitats. I’m finishing the final film in the series about the human impact on the environment for the Nature Wildlife Network.” Mia inhaled, searching for air to clog the wheeze in her throat. Walking and talking had never before left her winded.

“If you’re traveling for your films, where do you call home?” Helen asked.

Lately wherever her tent stakes stuck in the ground. “I’m a bit of a nomad.”

“Or perhaps you haven’t discovered that one place you want to settle in,” Helen suggested.

Nothing relaxed inside Mia at the idea of living in the same place. Her mother had established herself in New York. But Mia wasn’t a stayer like her mom. She wasn’t made for settling. Her father had taught her to live her passion. Documentary films weren’t made behind a desk, scouring the internet for video footage. To be a success she must embrace her father’s lifestyle and not settle for anything less. “I’ve settled into being a nomad.”

“My husband never liked to travel.” Helen paused and held out her hand, curving her arm like a graceful ballerina. “I always wanted to dance through a field of heather or touch a red ginger flower in the wild or collect seashells along a white-sand beach.”

Mia had dug more than her toes in the white sand in the Gulf of Mexico. She’d crawled across the beach on her stomach, filming the rare Kemp’s ridley hatchlings emerging from their nests to crawl home to the ocean. Sand stuck to places it never should’ve been weeks after they’d wrapped filming. She hadn’t exactly danced through the field of heather; more like trampled the purple flowers, tracking the sea eagles on the Isle of Skye. Yet the cloud of midges and her severe allergic reaction to the bites from the hundreds of tiny bugs downgraded the trip from cherished to agonizingly itchy. If only she hadn’t followed her father up the mountainside for a shot that had never made the final film cut.

However, she could envision a younger version of Helen Reid sashaying through that same field, pausing to greet each flower like a garden fairy from the ancient myths. The images clicked through her mind, vivid stills of moments captured and preserved. But Mia wasn’t creating a memory book for Helen. “You could celebrate your full recovery by traveling to Scotland with Wyatt.”

“He has other important commitments and I have my gardens. At least for now.” The steel in Helen’s tone gave the sadness in her quiet gaze a backbone.

“Have your doctors restricted you from gardening when you get home?”

“My doctors like to tell me I’ve a bionic hip now.” Helen patted her leg. “I may need to replace the other one so it can keep up with its new-and-improved partner.”

“When will you be back to your gardens?” Mia asked.

“As soon as I can convince my doctor to sign off on my get-out-of-jail paperwork.” Helen’s therapist guided her into the chair. After ensuring Helen’s comfort, the woman disappeared into another patient room. Helen shifted to look at Mia. “When do you get to leave?”

“As soon as Dr. Hensen agrees to close my wound and any doctor signs my discharge papers.” Mia lowered herself into the chair beside Helen and swallowed her sigh of relief. She refused to look at Robyn, who scribbled across her paper notes before checking over Mia one last time and rushed off.

Helen tugged her walker closer to rest her arm on. “We both need someone to recognize we’re more than capable of handling our own affairs and seeing to our own health.”

“You’ll let me know when you’ve found that person, won’t you?” Mia tipped her head against the windowsill behind her and inhaled around the throbbing in her leg.

“As long as you promise to do the same,” Helen said.

“Wyatt must’ve noticed your progress,” Mia said. “Surely he wants you back home.”

“My son is not the person we need,” Helen said. “He doesn’t believe I’m safe in my gardens.”

“Wyatt wants you to give up your gardens?” Mia asked. Wyatt wanted Mia to give up on her film to focus on her recovery, as if she couldn’t do both successfully.

“Insists I’m not safe in my own home now. Can you imagine? I’ve lived there longer than he’s been alive.” Helen shifted in her chair. “Wyatt doesn’t believe in anything he cannot control.”

Like love. Wyatt had wanted Mia to stay in Africa to discover if there was something more than attraction between them. But that meant putting her work second. Something he hadn’t been willing to do himself. It also meant taking a chance on love.

But she’d vowed years ago never to risk everything for love. Her mother had loved like that and had ended up alone with only her wedding ring as proof of her thirty-year marriage. Besides, she’d witnessed her father choose between his work and his wife. There hadn’t been enough love for both in his life. You have to be willing to sacrifice for your art, Mia. It’s the only way to build a legacy. Perhaps her father was right, except there was nothing for Mia to sacrifice if she never risked her heart.

The elevator doors slid open and Wyatt stepped onto the floor, confidence and determination in every sure step down the hall toward them. Awareness fired across her nerves, straightening her spine and kicking up her pulse. He irritated her, nothing more than that. How could he take away his mother’s passion and crush her like that? How insensitive was he? Keeping her mom in the home she’d bought with Mia’s father on their first anniversary was Mia’s priority.